


Bird with Clipped Wings

by Romiress



Category: Batman: Arkham (Video Games), Batman: Arkham Knight Genesis (Comics)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Arkham Game Universe, Gen, Not Beta Read, Not quite a fix it fic but getting there, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-26
Updated: 2019-04-26
Packaged: 2020-02-04 18:25:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18610021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Romiress/pseuds/Romiress
Summary: A what if from the Arkham Games, taking heavily from Arkham Knight Genesis. What if Bruce had found Jason?





	Bird with Clipped Wings

There’s irony in when he finds him. Not when he was searching, spending every waking moment turning over every stone in hopes of finding some kind of clue, but instead when he’s given up. When he’s resigned himself to the obvious truth: That Jason isn’t coming home.

It’s chance that gives him the answer he needs. He’s angry--because he’s angry all the time these days, the frustration building with every failure--and he slams his fist into the wall.

It doesn’t crumble, but it does sound  _wrong_ , and all of a sudden all he can hear is the sound of his own blood, pounding in his ears.

It’s a secret passage. He doesn’t bother messing around trying to find an entrance. There’s probably a switch somewhere, a way to get it open, but with the sound of blood rushing in his ears Bruce simply leans forward, sprays on a local explosive, and blows the wall out.

Somewhere in the distance, a siren rings out. He should have known it would happen, but all of a sudden he can’t think. He’s on the verge of something, and the anxiety feels like a physical weight on his body as he follows the stairs down.

Old. The area is old. But it shows signs of life. Someone’s been down these steps. The corners are filled with dust and grime, but the center remains clean, wiped by thousands of footsteps.

Bruce feels sicker the farther he goes. He can smell blood. He can smell rot. This is is part of the old building, not new construction. Abandoned when Arkham was built over it, and for a moment Bruce wonders if he’s wrong. If he’s just blown a hole in the wall and put Arkham into lock down for nothing. For some janitor’s break room.

Standing before the heavy metal door he can’t make himself believe it. He can’t make himself believe that it’s  _nothing_ , that this was all a wild goose chase, that this was his mind playing tricks on him.

He thinks he’s going to scream before he can make himself open it. He just stands there, terrified of what might be beyond it. There’s a million possibilities and all of them are aweful.

This is where he was. He knows it. He knows it by the proximity to the Joker’s cell. By the access it would have had. The Joker hadn’t been sneaking out. The Joker had stayed right where he was, and then he’d come here.

Which means Jason’s on the other side. Which means when he opens the door, he’s going to find his body. His search is going to be over.

Bruce still can’t make himself open the door. Instead he sags forward, his forehead pressing to the metal of the door. In the distance, he can still hear the alarm, and there’s a chirp on his comm as Oracle cuts in.

“We have alarms at Arkham. Some kind of an explosion,” she says, sounding alarmed. “Are you still there?” Her voice crackles, cutting in and out, stymied by interference.

He wonders what to say. ‘It was me’ doesn’t quite seem to summarize it. Doesn’t quite explain. But he can’t make himself sit there and explain it to her, so he keeps it short.

“Interference,” he says. “Investigating a hidden passage.”

She responds in the affirmative, and Tim cuts in, saying something Bruce doesn’t quite hear.

Bile rises in his throat as he presses a hand against the door. It’s heavy, but he can feel it give as he applies pressure.

He just has to make himself open it. He just has to open it, and find Jason’s body, and leave. That’s all he has to do, but every step of the process feels like a thousand pounds bearing down on him.

He gave up. He stopped looking. And now he’s found him anyway.

He reaches up, tapping his comm, and hopes the interference isn’t too great.

“Dick,” he says quietly, hoping that he has his communicator in even if he’s not supposed to be working tonight.

“Already suited up,” comes the response immediately. “What’s going on?” There’s interference, but it’s not as bad as Bruce might have hoped. He isn’t even sure if he wants to have the conversation he started, frozen there on the threshold.

“If you don’t hear from me in thirty minutes, come to Arkham. You’ll find the passage easily. I might... need you.”

“Ominous,” comes the crackled response, and then Bruce simply turns his communicator off entirely.

There’s only the distant sound of the alarm and his own thoughts.

It seems to take a century by the time he finally makes his hand move, pushing his weight into the door to force it open. The room is dark and dilapitated, the scent of blood and rot thick. Someone’s bled there. Someone’s bled a lot there. There’s no light, and after a moment’s pause Bruce draws out a flashlight.

He isn’t sure if he wants to see. He won’t risk night vision. Won’t risk being blinded. Even if the Joker’s still in his cell, that doesn’t mean someone else might not have been left down here to guard the body.

He’s also afraid of seeing the whole room. He’s afraid of seeing everything and having it hit him all at once. He has to keep it together, even knowing what he’s going to find.

There’s dried blood on the floor, staining the old wood a dark brown. He sweeps the flashlights around the room, finding a mess of things. Rotten food in the corners where it’s been dropped. Tables, broken and still standing. It was a storage room, he guesses by the exposed pipes in the walls. Leftover from before. Sealed in, but not completely.

The smell is enough to make him gag at close proximity, and there’s a hole in the corner Bruce can’t make himself go near.

He realizes he knows the room. He recognizes it. It’s more worn down now, more busted up, but it’s the room from the tape.

He’s in the room where Jason died.

Bruce doesn’t remember falling, but when he’s next aware of himself he realizes he’s on his knees, his fists pressed to the floor. Jason died here. He died in this room. How many times had Bruce walked past the entrance? How many times had he been within twenty feet of Jason and had no idea?

He seems to be alone for a long time, and then there’s a hand pressed onto his shoulder, Dick’s voice in his ear, soft and obviously trying to be comforting.

“Bruce,” he says, his voice hardly over a whisper. “Come on. We need to go.” In the distance he can hear a hubub, but no more alarm. They’re probably waiting now, waiting for him and Nightwing to come out so they can go in. He hasn’t explained anything to anyone. He’s not sure if he can.

“I have to find him,” he makes himself say, but his voice doesn’t sound like his own. It sounds distant and far away, and beside him Dick makes a noise of unhappiness. “He’s here, somewhere.”

In pieces. He knows what he’s going to find. He saw the hacksaw. He knows what Joker implied before the tape cut off.

He wonders if that’s going to be the next few years of his life, searching all of Arkham for pieces of Jason just so he finally has something to bury.

“Bruce,” Dick says again, and he’s so out of it he can’t even figure out what he’s trying to say. Don’t waste your time? Don’t do this to yourself? Don’t just sit there?

He pushes himself to his feet. He feels a hundred years old. Like he’s long past his prime and desperately searching for something to hold onto.

He makes himself take a step forward. He makes himself shine the flashlight around the room. He finds it easier once he’s done that, the first step easing the way for what comes after. He has a job to do, so he pushes everything else aside.

He considers asking Dick to help, and then decides against it. He doesn’t anyway, just stands by the door in the darkness, watching Bruce as he starts to work his way around the room.

He doesn’t recognize what he’s looking at when he finally does see it. There’s a chair toppled over, worse for the wear but intact, with what looks like rusted barbed wire tangled up the back. But as he shines the light, he catches a glimpse of flesh.

He realizes someone is in the chair. They’re lying on their side where the chair has toppled, their arms bound and bloody behind the chair, but they’re  _there_.

He steps over the chair to look before he can think things through.

For a moment that seems to stretch on forever, he thinks he’s found Jason’s corpse. He’s think as one, still in his uniform, and yet it hangs off him anyway. His eyes are sunken, and there are scars, bruises, and old blood on every bit of available skin. His eyes are open, but staring at nothing, and he’s so still Bruce is sure he’s dead.

And then his brain--the brain that has gotten him into and out of trouble a million times--recognizes that  _Jason Todd died six months ago, his body should be rotten_.

He’s not rotten. The smell is obvious and awful, but it’s not the smell of a six month old corpse. Some of the blood still shows traces of red. He’s still bruised.

Bruce makes a noise with his mouth that he’s sure was supposed to be Jason’s name.

He makes another noise, and he thinks that might have been Dick’s name.

He can’t make himself say it as he bends down, pressing his fingers to Jason’s neck before catching himself.

He peels off the glove and tries again, feeling a slow but steady heart beat under them.

Jason Todd isn’t dead. He’s not in pieces. He’s alive, significantly worse for the wear, but still alive. Still breathing.

He’s not reacting though. He doesn’t seem to be seeing anything, and Bruce shoves his glove back on.

Jason has waited a year. He’ll keep for a few more minutes, but Bruce doesn’t  _want_  him to, so he immedaitely digs into his belt, pulling wire cutters and cutting him lose.

Jason sags, but he doesn’t acknowledge it at all, and then it’s Dick’s turn to make a surprised noise from where he stands.

“Hold on,” he says, a note of panic in his voice. “Is he-”

“Alive,” Bruce finishes for him. “He needs medical attention.”

It gives him a goal. Something to aim for. He has to get Jason out. He needs to get him medical attention. He’s so,  _so_  careful as he picks Jason up off the floor, but there’s blood anyway. Some of the barbs have dug into his flesh, and pulling them away makes them bleed again, and even so Jason still doesn’t seem to acknowledge him at all.

He carries Jason in his arms as he heads back up the stairs, cradling him like a child.

* * *

 

Bruce isn’t sure how long it’s been. He’s seen the sun come up twice, but he thinks he might have slept through at least one more sunrise. He’s still in his suit, and he knows the smell must be awful, but no one says a thing. Dick comes and goes. The doctors give him a wide berth. But for the most part, the hospital is silent.

Everyone knows what happened. Everyone’s seen the photo of Batman, cradling the body of a man identified by someone--he suspects it might be Dick--as the second Robin.

Everyone knows, and for the most part, they seem to be leaving him alone.

He sits in the room by Jason’s bedside, listening to the constant beeping of the instruments, and wonders how he got so small. Jason used to be so full of energy, but lying still on the bed he might as well be dead. 

He’s seen four bags of blood drain into him, and he’s counted two or three bags of fluid and nutrients on top of that. None of the doctors have told him how bad it is. He knows only what he catches from whispered conversations.

The J on Jason’s cheek feels like a scarlet letter. Impossible to ignore in the light, even if he all but missed it in the darkness when he found him. A brand. A literal brand, screaming the Joker’s ownership.

Someone opens the door beside him, and Bruce doesn’t move.

“Oh hell,” comes Gordon’s voice from behind him. “Are you still here?” He’s one of the few visitors, and one of the few willing to talk to him when he does, even if Bruce barely responds back. “Makes my job easier, at least.”

He steps up beside Bruce at the bedside, looking down at the frail body before them.

He makes a noise of obvious disgust, and then turns his whole body so he can face Bruce and not have to look at Jason at all. It takes everything Bruce has not to toss Gordon out of the room then and there, but he reminds himself that Jason is not pretty to look at, and Gordon is a good man. He’s seen enough hurt people. He probably just doesn’t want to look at another mangled body.

“Have you gone home at all?” He asks, and there’s a long pause before Bruce shakes his head.

“Should have seen that one coming,” Gordon says, and there’s something in the way he says it that sets off an alarm in Bruce’s head. “You should, though. Get cleaned up. Make  _appearances.”_

Oh. No question what he means by that. People might have already noticed Bruce Wayne hasn’t shown up. The Batman has, but that’ll only fool the public, the ones who don’t know he’s been sitting by a hospital bed for several days. Bruce Wayne is a whole other matter. Dick and Tim can’t manage that for him.

Which means Gordon knows. He’s suspected for a while that Gordon knew, but this is as close to confirmation as he’s ever gotten.

“I’m not leaving him,” he says simply.

Gordon lets out a long sigh, and then rests a hand on Bruce’s shoulder. He can barely feel it through the suit, but the idea is there at least.

“Thank you Gordon,” he says after a moment.

“You got him,” Gordon says. “That’s what matters. You found him. He’s not going to magically be better. You can’t just wave your hand and undo it. But you found him. And I think he’ll recognize that.”

Bruce hopes its true. He hopes that Jason isn’t too far gone. But no matter what, he tries to remind himself that what matters is that he found him. He’s there. And he’s not going to let anyone take Jason away again.


End file.
